Political Quotes

“Mr. President, yesterday I had the opportunity to respond to the majority on my support for Tony Blinken to be the Secretary of State. He is someone I have known for a long period of time. I think we will see that with the new administration here and myself being a conservative Republican, there will be some appointments that I will not really be excited about and agree with, in which case I will state it. But in the case of the Secretary of State, I expressed myself yesterday and I want to do it again today for what I consider to be a really critical first appointment--second appointment that the new administration makes, and that would be for General Austin to be the person in charge at a time that is very unique. I agree with the Senator who just spoke about the qualities of this general. We know that he rose through the ranks through the Army to become the first four-star general and commander of Central Command from 2013 to 2016. He has done everything right. We, right now--I know the Presiding Officer is aware of this and certainly the ranking member of the committee is aware of this--we are in the most threatening times that we have ever been in. We have China and Russia out there with capabilities that we didn't really believe we would find ourselves with. So that is going to be the primary concern of this new administration, and I can't think of a better person to take the helm than General Austin to provide the leadership.…”